RE: How many has god killed?
December 2, 2014 at 9:49 am
(This post was last modified: December 2, 2014 at 9:54 am by Tonus.)
(December 1, 2014 at 11:18 pm)JesusChristLover Wrote: God created a world, a wild and free world, to be the breeding ground for things God values in human beings — things like courage, devotion, loyalty, self-sacrifice, kindness, generosity, hope, trust. By anybody’s reckoning these are a few of the noblest features of humanity. Would such qualities exist in a world without risk, danger, calamity — and death?Are you saying that it would be impossible for god to create a world where those bad things do not exist?
(December 2, 2014 at 9:17 am)Alice Wrote: Fictional beings inspire. Fear... morale... anger... sadness... a fictional being can accomplish much with a person.I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and he explains how researchers have learned about the ways in which the face can form pretty much any expression. While two of them were mapping out the various combinations, they came to the realization that on those days when they spent hours practicing sad or angry expressions, they felt physically miserable. They conducted experiments with volunteers and found that simply expressing an emotion with your face would create the corresponding reactions in the body.
This isn't that difficult to test: most people who practice deliberately expressing the widest, silliest, goofiest smile they can manage will find it almost impossible not to feel an almost crazy sense of euphoria for a short moment, and may find themselves suppressing laughter. Practicing a scowl long enough will elevate heart rate and blood pressure to the extent that it may cause a pounding in the temples. We are what we express.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould